Flush floors of various kinds are well known in the prior art. Many such flush floors are utilized in animal confinement situations. In this setting, flush floors allow accumulated biologic waste materials to be easily removed from the surface of the floor by a flushing agent, and to be thereafter directed to an appropriate collection site.
Some flush floors are formed of poured concrete. Many attempts have been made to provide such a concrete flush floor with integrally formed troughs. These efforts have met with many difficulties.
To date, the success of such integral trough forming methods have been highly dependent upon the characteristics of each particular batch of concrete. This has necessitated the accurate use of slump readings and other tests to determine the particular characteristics of a particular load of concrete, and the adjustment of trough forming parameters accordingly. Even with appropriate attention to these details, however, an unacceptable risk exists that the resulting floor will be unsatisfactory. In this event, the floor must be removed and repoured.
There therefore exists a need for a method and apparatus for forming a poured concrete floor having integral troughs that is simple, reliable, inexpensive, eliminates special concrete needs and that yields a durable, efficient and otherwise well constructed floor.